A LUCRATIVE BUSINESS

Putaruru Press, Volume XXI, Issue 1232, 29 May 1947, Page 3

A LUCRATIVE BUSINESS

COLLECTION OF SEAWEED Highly Valued. Overseas Six months’ collection of agar on Ibhs Hawke’si Bay coast and other beaches has brought in 27 tons of the seaweed, returning something over £3OOO to the men and women who gathered it. Collecting King Neptune’s rubbish can be a lucrative business. One man found a rich haul in a secluded cove south of Castle Point, acid in a week-end collected over £SO worth of the weed. Dried, pressed and baled, the strong-smelling agar isi being sent from the Internal Marketing Division’s store at Hastings to a firm of manufacturers in Christchurch. Seven tons of weed have already been sent, and a further cons-gn-mobt cf 20 tons is being prepared for shipment. Agar is an ochre and straw-col-oured weed with light feathery fronds which grows prolifically on the rock areas of some parts of the seaHbed. Tom from the rocks in violent weather, after every storm lt/rge quantities of the weed are w,ashed up on the beaches, forming a high-smelling mass of rubbish at high-tide mark. In New Zealand agar is almost exclusively used for gelatine manufacture, carried out extensively by a South Island l concern. Overseas it is widely used for the manufacture of penicillin and other valuable drugs, the New Zealand product being held in high regard for this purpose, The authorities state that there is an ever-growing demand for agar, particularly the high-class New Zealand weed. A fertile field exists on a stretch of the coast at Oawhanga, out from Dannevirke, and it is from there the bulk of the Hawke’s Bay collection has come. Even in fine weather the sea casts up a steady supply' of the weed to keep every local resident fully occupied.